[Dxspider-support] Hamclock connections

Thu Mar 2 13:17:10 GMT 2023

David,

Thanks for the detailed information you provided regarding HamClock. Based
on your description and the reply email Michael received from the author
(Elwood), it's clear that nothing has changed since he and I exchanged
emails last year. I brought up the same concerns with him that Michael
shared with examples and got the same overall response. Yes, HamClock is
really cool and displays lots of information on your monitor screen.
However, it gets all that data by querying whatever cluster it's connected
to. Elwood's reply confirms these facts of this intense "resource hog" in
action, especially when multiple node users are running this software. I
read through the HamClock manual last year to get familiar with it,
especially the user settings. It was then that I decided not to allow
HamClock anywhere near my nodes. I don't need to run HamClock myself, since
I can see it in action on the cluster window.

Thanks again for sharing your insight.

73, Steve - AA4U

On Thu, Mar 2, 2023, 5:36 AM David Spoelstra <davids at mediamachine.com>
wrote:

> I use HamClock. In HamClock, there are three panes that can display
> different information like SFI, images of the sun, POTA/SOTA activations,
> VOCAP, Current DXpeditions, and DXSpider spots among many others (see pages
> 5 & 6 https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/HamClockKey.pdf).
> You can also set the panes up to rotate through that information if you
> want to display more than three pieces of information.
>
> Unfortunately, DXSpider spots is not one I run since my logging program,
> CQRLog, is always displaying a window of my spots.
>
> I did look at the settings for you and the only settings are the address,
> port, login, and up to four custom commands. The custom commands default to
> blank, so it could be that your users are adding commands that take a lot
> of bandwidth. I'm not currently running a cluster so unfortunately I can't
> look at the traffic for you.
>
> One last thing. You can run HamClock on any linux machine. You do not have
> to have his hardware. I'm not running his hardware, only the software on an
> old netbook I had laying around running Puppy linux. You too can run it on
> any linux box in a window and test the traffic yourself.
>
> Here are some quick instructions if you want to quickly run it on your
> local linux box.
> 1. Download the zip or tgz file from
> https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/
> 2. Unzip/untar into a local directory.
> 3. cd into that directory.
> 4. Run "make -j 4 hamclock-800x480" where you substitute one of the
> supported sizes (800x480, 1600x960, 2400x1440, 3200x1920). That will be the
> size of the fixed window it will run in.
> For example, on my big Ubuntu 22.04.02 machine, I did "make -j 4
> hamclock-1600x960"
> 5. Then run the executable you created. On my Ubuntu machine it would be:
> "./hamclock-1600x960"
> 6. If you want to create a .desktop file so you can have it integrated
> into your apps with an icon you can click on, just let me know and I'll
> give you those instructions.
>
> It's actually a neat app that I'll run when I'm away from my shack to see
> what's going on in the ham world since it has news, propagation maps, and a
> ton of other things.
>
> Lastly, if I ever bring my node back up I'd be happy to test.
>
> -David, N9KT
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 2, 2023 at 5:51 AM Stephen Carroll <aa4u.steve at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> I'm curious, since you are apparently a HamClock user. Do you run a
>> cluster node and does it feed your HamClock? If so, have you experienced
>> firsthand how much this software is a "resource hog"?
>>
>> I'd like to find a node SysOp who runs HamClock that can explain what
>> their experience has been and if that person sees what I see with all the
>> inquiries from the software. Maybe it's a user settings issue.
>>
>> 73, Steve
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 2, 2023, 4:30 AM David Spoelstra <davids at mediamachine.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Mike-
>>> Try elwood.downey at gmail.com
>>> -David, N9KT
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 10:03 PM Michael Walker <va3mw at portcredit.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I emailed him and the email bounced.
>>>>
>>>> Mike va3mw
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 9:53 PM Stephen Carroll via Dxspider-support <
>>>> dxspider-support at tobit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I've already brought this up with the author (Elwood) last year; with
>>>>> no resolution in sight yet. It's not a DXSpider issue (or any other cluster
>>>>> software or website), but rather excessive requirements by HamClock and/or
>>>>> users that don't have it configured correctly.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2023, 7:53 PM David Spoelstra <davids at mediamachine.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Maybe someone who understands the DX Spider software could contact
>>>>>> the HamClock author, Elwood Downey, WBØOEW, at
>>>>>> ecdowney at clearskyinstitute.com. He is very responsive (he's added
>>>>>> two features I suggested) and can probably easily fix the issue if someone
>>>>>> can clearly explain it to him.
>>>>>> -David, N9KT
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 5:25 PM Stephen Carroll via Dxspider-support <
>>>>>> dxspider-support at tobit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm glad you brought this topic up. I have been planning to voice my
>>>>>>> opinion. What you tolerate as a SysOp is completely up to your individual
>>>>>>> threshold level. But, I have basically outlawed any user on my nodes from
>>>>>>> connecting if using HamClock. At one point, I had 6 users running the
>>>>>>> software 24/7. I refer to this software as a "resource hog" because of how
>>>>>>> much data it requests for every spot, then resends the users Name, QTH and
>>>>>>> QRA every 15-30 seconds (which is probably the default). I have a modest
>>>>>>> computer and cable modem setup for the cluster and home network usage. If
>>>>>>> the connected user callsign appears like this (AA4U), they are probably
>>>>>>> using HamClock. I will usually ask the user to connect to a larger scale
>>>>>>> node, after explaining why it's a resource hog.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> YMMV !!!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 73, Steve - AA4U
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2023, 3:59 PM Michael Walker via Dxspider-support <
>>>>>>> dxspider-support at tobit.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Guys
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Since I am digging into a few things, one of my users was sending a
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> set/location about every 15 seconds
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> and then a show/heading for every spot.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It turns out it was HAMCLOCK which seems really chatty.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Mike va3mw
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Dxspider-support mailing list
>>>>>>>> Dxspider-support at tobit.co.uk
>>>>>>>> https://mailman.tobit.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dxspider-support
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Dxspider-support mailing list
>>>>>>> Dxspider-support at tobit.co.uk
>>>>>>> https://mailman.tobit.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dxspider-support
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dxspider-support mailing list
>>>>> Dxspider-support at tobit.co.uk
>>>>> https://mailman.tobit.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dxspider-support
>>>>>
>>>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.tobit.co.uk/pipermail/dxspider-support/attachments/20230302/9d097f8b/attachment-0001.htm>